In Search of Alia SHAWKAT

In the spotlight since childhood— and now, suddenly, really in the spotlight.

- By Rachel Handler

ONE MORNING LAST FALL, happily stoned and painting alone in her art studio, Alia Shawkat realized her name was trending on Twitter. Photos of the actress walking out of a Los Angeles theater alongside Brad Pitt had just been published, and both the baser and the ostensibly nobler segments of the internet were agog. “I was like, I don’t believe this,” says Shawkat in late May from her sunny Los Angeles kitchen, where she’s just woken up a little before 11:30 a.m., yanked on a bright-blue pullover, and FaceTimed me, looking glowy and a little sleepy. As she recounts the story, she alternates between smoking a cigarette and sipping a green smoothie, occasionally gesticulating with an oversize lighter. “All my friends were like, ‘What’s going on?’ and sending me photos,” she says. “I just felt overwhelmed. It’s that feeling of being naked in school, like, Oh my God, everyone’s looking at me.”

The blurry paparazzi snaps began in earnest after Shawkat, 31, and Pitt, 56, were spotted at that playhouse, at Mike Birbiglia’s one-man show, at a Thundercat concert, at In-N-Out burger, at one of Shawkat’s gallery shows, and at Kanye West’s opera. The photos would be utterly mundane—the two laugh and hug and ponder a fast-food menu—if not for the fact that Pitt’s dating life has long been dissected with the fervor of one billion unhinged scientists.